Great Courses – Post-Impressionism: The Beginnings of Modern Art

The Pound Ridge Library is pleased to announce the continuation of a series of lectures which mark the eleventh year of courses which are part of the library’s continuing presentation of a new educational concept in life-long learning: a series of DVD seminars from The Teaching Company/The Great Courses encompassing a wide variety of subjects, given by outstanding scholars from major colleges and universities throughout the United States. This program, the first of its kind in the country, is designed to provide collegial, small group-setting for courses “you didn’t get to take at college, but wanted to.” The seminars, developed by the late Lawrence Brotmann of Pound Ridge, NY are held at the library on Thursdays at 12:30 pm and consist of four 30-minute DVD (closed-captioned) lectures per session, most from 3 to 6 weeks per course.

Post-Impressionism: The Beginnings of Modern Art takes you deeply into an extraordinary world of color and light, where you will experience a galvanizing and game-changing era in painting across 24 lectures. In the brilliant presentation of Professor Ricky Allman, of the University of Missouri–Kansas City, this course tells an epic story, unfurling a spectacular panorama of paintings, revealing the artists’ reimagining of their tools, methods, and goals. As Professor Allman puts it, “Now that the Impressionists have unlocked the door, the Post-Impressionists are going to blow it off its hinges.”

Encounter Painters of Vision and Genius

Broadly speaking, the Post-Impressionists were more interested in what they felt than what they saw. They not only invented extraordinary new pictorial techniques and visual effects, but they also looked for ways to go beneath the surface level of reality, to tell deeper and more compelling truths. Within the wide spectrum of painters presented in the course, Professor Allman will guide you on an in-depth exploration of the work of:

Paul Cézanne. Take the measure of Cézanne’s massive impact both as a painter and a major influence on other artists. In his iconic landscapes and still lifes, observe how he distilled subject matter to essential underlying forms, painting objects from more than one angle at once, dismantling and reassembling visual perception and opening new ways of seeing.
Georges Seurat. Track the process by which Seurat pioneered the technique of divisionism or pointillism, where colors applied separately on the canvas are blended by the viewer’s eye. Witness his use of this technique in Bathers at Asnières, La Grande Jatte, and in his electric evocations of Parisian life and culture, giving the world a uniquely different way of painting.
Vincent van Gogh. In two detailed and penetrating lectures, get to the heart of what made Van Gogh one of the most famous artists of all time. Observe how his troubled youth, passionate spirit, personal relationships, and his mental illness figured into the development of his work, leading to paintings of searing visual intensity, glorious color, and larger-than-life emotion.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Go behind the scenes of Toulouse-Lautrec’s dazzling paintings of Parisian night life—the lush, sensual views of cafés, music halls, circuses, and brothels that remain some of the most beloved images of the Belle Époque. Learn about his work process, and how he pioneered wide visibility for his art through the medium of prints.

To know this history-making era in painting, and the phenomenal spectrum of masterworks it produced, is to experience one of Western art’s most glorious moments. The spellbinding imagery of Post-Impressionists continues to touch us deeply today.